Pray and Fast for Peace: What Would Peace Look Like?

The Holy Father Pope Francis has called on all Catholics to pray and fast for peace tomorrow.

What exactly, other than “peace,” are we praying for?

The video below gives a few ideas, and I think they are good ones. What if the president used his considerable powers to convince other leaders around the world, beginning with our great ally Great Britain, and moving onward through the list of nations, including Russia to come together to demand a negotiated peace in Syria?

I don’t see, how, if everyone got together, that they could resist.

That would save lives, and it would prevent this nation of ours from enmeshing itself further in the cycle of violence that is tearing the Middle East apart. I am mindful of what President Dwight Eisenhower said:

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.

America has reached the point where we seem to react to every problem around the globe with an almost automatic call to arms. There are teens in this country today who have never lived in a peacetime nation. We can not continue to try to solve every problem by firing off missiles.

The Holy Father is absolutely right: We should give negotiation an all-out effort.

War should be the last option we consider when faced with a crisis, not the first.